L vs. L Cheapo

Recently on POTN I purchased a Yashica ML 50mm f/2 mount lens for the whopping price of $25 shipped. This lens was originally for Yashica and Contax manual focus 35mm film cameras and uses an adapter to allow it to be used on the EF mount of the Canon dslrs. The lens came to me in like new condition and I purchased the adapter from Rainbow Imaging on ebay.


When I first switched over to Canon from Olympus one of the first lens purchases I made was the Carl Zeiss ZE 50mm f/1.4. It was a very nice lens with great color, great bokeh, and built like a tank, but for the price I was not using as much as I should and ended up selling it. The 50mm focal length is one I don't use often (I'd rather be at 85 or 35), so when I saw this for $25 I figured why not pick it up and try it out and I have been very pleased.


This morning while I was out getting acquainted with the 50 I was wondering how well it compares to Canon L glass. Canon L glass is the best that Canon has to offer and they are truly nice lenses, I currently shoot the EF 85mm f/1.2L II and EF 24-70mm f/2.8L. I don't have a 50mm to compare it against so it went up a against the 85. For the test I did nothing fancy, both cameras at f/8 on a tripod, manual focus using live view and all adjustments in post are the same. The 85 was moved a little further back due to the focal length.

First is the Yashica shooting the 85.

Now the 85 shooting the Yashica.

And then the 24-70 shooting both the 85 and Yashica.

Now the test is not scientific in any way. Just some photos comparing the cameras at f/8 and to me the clear winner is the 85. It has better contrast and is sharper, but not by much. In terms of value the Yashica cant be beat. It was a fraction of the price of the 50L, sure it's not 1.2 but it was only $25. Now the big surprise to me was the image quality of the Yashica compared to the 24-70L. The L does have better contrast but the image is softer and shows chromatic aberration. I'm a little disappointed with the 24-70 but it is said that primes do have better image quality than zooms.

I don't think I'll give up my L lenses I'm using now but I am definitely going to be looking for used manual focus before buying anything else. Contax has some nice Zeiss glass that can be picked up at good prices. This coming week I also have some Mamiya m645 medium format lenses coming to try out. Below is a photo shot with the Yashica and more are posted on my flickr.